Greenglass House (19 page)

“Shh.” He stared at the map and then up again.

“Yeah, but what are you—”

“Shh!” He held up his hand for silence until she closed her mouth and crossed her arms and stood back. “Something . . . but I don't know what it is.”

“Fine.” Sirin walked over to the pile of canvas, climbed up, sat, and wrapped her arms around her knees. That's when Negret realized what was different.

“That's it!” he crowed. “Move.” He shooed Sirin off the pile and started shifting layers of the fabric out of the way.

The day before, the canvas had been stacked so that when they'd sat on it, there had been room for both of them on top of the pile, plus space for Negret's rucksack between them. Today there was really only room for one kid.

The canvas was heavy and full of dust, but with Sirin's help Negret managed to shift it in huge folds until the pile became a grimy lake of sailcloth. And amid the waves in the lake was a misshapen bump sandwiched between the last two layers of fabric.

Negret crawled in between those layers, coughing and wiping cobwebs from his nose, until he reached the bump. Then he scrambled back out into the half-light of the Emporium with the thing in his hand.

“I don't believe it,” Sirin protested as he emerged.

“I don't either.” The two of them stared down at the embroidered canvas bag. There was the stitched-and-knotted image of Greenglass House, surrounded by blue-green pines. He turned it over, and there was the gate. It was unmistakably the same gate as the one in the watermark and the windows—but there was one difference. The gate on the bag had a detail the others did not: a little knot of bronzy-gold thread suspended from one side. A lantern.

“I want to give it back to her,” Negret said. “I don't want to make Mrs. Hereward wait.”

“Then we need to find Georgie's notebook. And I suspect, since the first two things were in different places, the notebook's probably going to be somewhere else too.”

“Yeah.” Negret kicked the edge of the canvas. “Here. Help me pile this back up.”

“Where d'you want to hide the bag until we find the notebook?” Sirin inquired.

“I've got a pretty good idea.” They muscled the canvas back into place and brushed off their hands. Negret picked up the bag. “Where'd you put the watch, by the way?”

“Buried it in one of the boxes of Gems of Ultimate Puissance.”

“Go get it. I thought of a better place.”

It had occurred to Negret just as he and Sirin had been trying to maneuver the heavy sailcloth back into an organized mass, which had reminded him of something else he had to do at some point that day, no matter what else happened in the house. That reminder had given him the idea for a perfect,
perfect
hiding place. “We need to get some stuff from our floor first, though.”

And they still had to find the notebook, which could be anywhere. As they left the Emporium and Negret locked the door behind them, he began making a mental list of places to search next. The empty rooms on the fourth and fifth floors, the basement, under every rug in the house . . .

Then, just before he started down the stairs, Sirin grabbed his arm and mouthed,
Wait.

There was a faint whispering in the hallway below. Negret and Sirin tiptoed to just above the turn in the stairs and hunkered down to listen.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Georgie's voice hissed. “I know it wasn't
you.
If it had been, I'm sure I'd never have known it was gone, 'cause it would have been back before I'd noticed it was missing.”

“Very true.” That was Clem.

“I need your help.” Georgie sounded reluctant and disgusted. “I need that notebook back.”

“Why the heck didn't you hide it better?”

“Because I
thought
the only person I was hiding it from was
you,
genius, and there's not much point in trying to hide anything from you, not in quarters this close.” Now Georgie just sounded angry. “Plus, I knew you wouldn't
take
it.”

Clem chuckled. “Well, thank you, I guess.”

“If you'll help me recover it,” Georgie said with a sigh, “I'll share what's in it with you.”

There was a pause. “No, you'll have to give me information that isn't in the notebook.”

Now Georgie laughed, but it wasn't a funny laugh. It was resigned. “Of course. I should have assumed you'd found a way to read it already.”

“Well? Do you
have
something that isn't in the notebook, Blue?”

“Oh, good grief. Of course I do.”

Crouched on the stairs above, Negret wrinkled his nose. There was a smell in the stairwell, peppery and flowery at the same time, that hadn't been there before.

“Okaaay . . . what else do you have?” There was the sound of snapping fingers. “I know. Your little camera project.” A pause. “Yes. I want that. I want your word that you'll show me the picture you took, when it's finished. The real one, not whatever ringer you're going to show the kid.”

“It's just a—a lark, Clem! The kid seemed interested. That's all. It has nothing to do with Owen.”

Owen?

“Baloney, Blue. Nothing you do is just a lark. I want to see the picture. No tricks.”

Another pause, and then a noise that was half snort, half sigh. “Fine.”

“And while we're being so chummy, was it by any chance you who was in my room yesterday?” Clem's voice inquired. Negret elbowed Sirin. She knew?

“Absolutely not. I'm not that stupid. I know my limitations.”

“I thought it might have been you because whoever it was didn't touch anything, as far as I can tell. Whoever it was
did
know their limitations.”

“Wasn't me, Clem. Look, do we have a deal or not?”

“Yeah, we do. I'll let you know as soon as I have anything to tell. And good grief, what the heck did you do, bathe in that stuff?”

“The kid broke the bottle in my bag. This is the only sweater I have. It has to be dry-cleaned, so Mrs. Pine couldn't just wash it, and this place is freezing today. You all are just going to have to deal.” The perfume. Georgie's perfume, from the smashed bottle—that was the smell in the stairwell.

“Holy moly. I'll lend you one of mine. Hang on.”

While Clem went to her room and retrieved a less odoriferous sweater for Georgie to borrow, gears turned in Negret's head.
What is it?
Sirin mouthed. He shook his head. There was something, something about the perfume . . .

Clem returned, Georgie thanked her, and Clem said something about what's a cardigan between moonlighters—which was odd, but not nearly as interesting to Negret just then as the elusive perfume thing. As the two guests headed back down the stairs, the pieces that had been nagging at him suddenly fell into place.

He grabbed Sirin's yellow sleeve. “Come on. I know where the notebook is!”

He took off down the steps with Sirin at his heels, not bothering to be quiet this time. After all, it didn't matter. He had the bag and the watch tucked in his rucksack, so there was nothing for the thief to go and rehide even if he or she did spot them.

“Excuse us,” Negret said cheerfully as he passed by Georgie just as she reached her own floor.

“Don't you want to tell her?” Sirin whispered as they continued toward the third floor.

“Not yet,” Negret whispered back.

“Don't you want to maybe tell
me?
”

“I'll show you.” He stopped on the third-floor landing, rushed to the end of the hall, picked up the white poinsettia in its green ceramic pot, and crept back to run down the next flight as quickly as he could. Then he and Sirin hurried through his family's apartment to his own bedroom.

“Get my trashcan,” he said as soon as the door was safely closed behind them. Then, holding the pot over the waste bin, he took the plant carefully by its main stalk and tugged it loose. As it came out of the pot, the wet soil held its shape for a moment before plopping away from the roots and into the bin. Something else fell into the bin, too: something in a plastic bag.

Sirin picked up the bag and opened it gingerly. The spicy-sweet smell that Negret had noticed on the poinsettia—and then again on the stairs near the attic—spread throughout the room as she pulled out a small, perfume-stained notebook with a bunch of loose pages stuffed into it.

“I should've remembered earlier,” Negret said, beaming proudly. “Poinsettias don't really have any smell.”

They sat on the bed with the three recovered items on the blanket between them: Georgie's sweetly reeking notebook, Mr. Vinge's gold watch, and Mrs. Hereward's embroidered ditty bag.

“Now what?” Sirin asked. “Can we just give them all back?”

“I'm not sure.” Negret picked up the notebook and tried to hold his breath while he spoke so he wouldn't inhale any more of the perfume than he had to. “I'm still sort of afraid that if we do, they'll think we took them. If we found one thing, that would be different, maybe. But all three? I think maybe we have to be a little sneaky about it.” He lifted the cover of the notebook. “Is it bad that I kind of want to look?”

“Look?”

“Through the notebook. To see what's in there that anybody would steal.”

Sirin grinned. “Are you kidding? If you don't, I will. Especially after all that stuff Georgie and Clem were saying upstairs.”

“It's just—” Negret hesitated. “It would be like reading somebody's journal or diary or something.”

“Gimme.” Sirin plucked the notebook out of his hands and opened it. Then she frowned, flipped a few pages, and frowned harder. “Good grief.”

“What is it?”

She made an exasperated noise and tossed the notebook across to him. He caught it awkwardly and opened it to the first page. Lines of incomprehensible words marched across the page. He turned to the next page, and the next. There were arrows, boxes, cross-outs, and things circled and underlined, but not a single word on a single page was written in English. “What the heck language is this?”

“I don't think it's a language, Negret.” The scholiast gave him a significant look. “Remember how she said she didn't think she'd be hiding it from anyone but Clem, so she didn't bother? She expected it to be found, but she didn't want it to be understood. I bet it's a
code.
”

“An
entire notebook
in code?” He dropped it on the bed and stared at Sirin. “What on earth is going on with all these people?”

“I don't know, but maybe it's time we worked out what we know about them. Do you have something to write on?”

“That spiral pad from the Emporium's in my bag. On the floor by the desk. Should be a pen in there, too.”

Sirin slid off the bed, rifled through the rucksack, and came back with the pad and pen. “Let's go in the order they got here,” she said, scribbling a bit to get the old ballpoint working. “Mr. Vinge was first, right?” She wrote his name at the top of the page. “What do we know?”

“Weird socks,” Negret said. “He reads a lot, but I didn't notice what.” He popped open the watch again. “Write down the inscription:
To D.C.V., with high esteem and thanks for a job well done, from D. and M.
”

“What else?” Sirin tapped the pen against her chin.

Negret leaned back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. “Can't think of anything else.”

“We'll come back to him.” She turned the page. “Who was next?”

“Georgie Moselle. Clem calls her Blue. They definitely knew each other before they got here. They don't seem to be friends, but they're still pretty nice to each other.”

“Georgie said something interesting,” Negret remembered. “When Clem said she wanted to see the picture from the cigar-box camera, Georgie said something like,
It has nothing to do with Owen.
Who's Owen? Maybe they just know each other a little because they both know this Owen person.”

“There's also the camera,” Sirin reminded him. “Georgie knows how to make cameras out of ordinary things, and Clem thinks she's taking a specific picture and the one she's going to show you is just a ringer—a fake.”

“And she has a whole notebook in code.” Negret picked it up again. “Want to write a little of it down?”

“Yeah.” Sirin copied a few lines. “What else we got?”

“She loaned me
The Raconteur's Commonplace Book.
” He thought back to that first day. “She said she particularly thought I might like how it starts.”

“Which is how?”

“Which is a whole bunch of people stuck at an inn, and someone suggests they tell stories. That's where . . .” He paused and frowned. “Well, that's where I got the idea last night, of course, but . . .”

Sirin was looking at him closely. “But what?”

Now he had another thought, although it seemed pretty far-fetched. “You don't think that's what she was hoping for when she gave it back to me, do you? That I'd try and get everyone telling stories about themselves?”

“Seems like that would be a lot to hope for,” Sirin said. “But I don't know if it's any weirder than the rest of the stuff that's going on around here. Anything else?”

Negret shook his head. Then he snapped his fingers. “This morning, when we were talking to her downstairs, she said—”

“Yes, yes!” Sirin brightened. “When you asked what was in the notebook, she said she'd made notes about this house—”

“And someone she thought might be connected to it.” He nodded. “The Owen person?”

“I bet it is. Can you ask your parents if they can think of an Owen?”

“Sure.” Negret scratched his head. “Okay, moving on. Next were Dr. Wilbur Gowervine and Mrs. Eglantine Hereward.” He smiled at the memory of the two of them wedged into the
Whilforber Whirlwind.
“They arrived at the same time.”